Manifesto and Hannibal (R.I.P. from NBC)

Art by Verauko.

Greetings all cinephiles, my name is Will Tordella. I’m from Maryland. I attended The School of The Art Institute of Chicago, and also the University of Maryland Baltimore County, but I have no degree. This most likely will change in the next few years. This blog is an exploration of the function of film, using its visual and formal devices as an entry point. I’ve always responded to cinema this way. Any movie I’ve loved has always left lasting images in my mind. I've most remembered the things I’ve seen. My first memory is the outside of a red-brick hospital building in a snow fall. I enjoy obsessing about movies, so if that appeals then perhaps you might keep reading. Before I get into things here, I'll give an official shout out to the sharp and insightful Tony Szhou of:

Every Frame a Painting. He does inspiring work. http://everyframeapainting.tumblr.com/ So here we go…

RED, and moving images. The problem is that human perception of green is not as receptive as our appreciation of the red-spectrum. The reason is red’s long wave length and that our eyes respond more to long wave ranges.

Physical_principles_for_RGB This is not to be confused with color sensitivity which would be in the yellow, green and blue range. The result is that we wrestle with it. In the video realm this has some very practical outcomes. (Most of the following can also be found on Wikipedia.) For us to perceive the colors as equal, the green and blue are compensated for in the video signal.

This causes red to have a "weaker" representation in the signal and during its life cycle with signal deterioration red suffers first, which results in increased noise and smear. In the past with analogue signals the green was a prioritized color. The issue with the red component is the same for analogue as well as a compressed digital signal.

The red's area is reduced, hence it is more pixelated. Problems can also arise with focus when shooting in predominately red light. And so we have a little “Red Death,” if you will, like the light of a star begun it’s descent to the end of life.

Things get more technical here. (But don't let it put you to sleep. "Red Death," is life and death when we're talking about the effect of an image on an audience.) "Red Death," is not an illusion. It arises from something called chroma subsampling. Most video codecs take advantage of the way that the human eye is more sensitive to brightness ("luma") than color ("chroma"), and in order to achieve greater compression, do not represent color in full resolution. It's slightly more complicated though: the brightness is actually made up of the sum of the three color components Red, Green and Blue. And they're not encoded as RGB, that would require more bandwidth, they're encoded as YUV. Y corresponds roughly to the green component, and the U and V are Y minus the red component and Y minus the blue component (a gross approximation, actually - if you want the whole formula look here). In most codecs the U and V components are sampled at a lower resolution than the Y. this is expressed in the three-way ratio you often see if you hang around video forums too much, e.g. 4:2:2 or 4:2:0. A common example of this notation is in the codec name "ProRes422" the 422 bit comes from 4:2:2 meaning for every a 4x2 rectangle there will be 4 Y samples in each row 2 UV samples in the first row (half the horizontal resolution) and 2 UV samples in the second row. So ProRes422 has half the chroma resolution of the luma. This means the red channel on its own has one quarter the resolution of the overall picture. And yet... Our eyes literally have a greater physical capacity for immediate response to the color red, than they do any other color. So actually that is more breadth in the red, isn't it? It is therefore our responsibility (as can be true outside of the color spectrum) to provide the depth. We must plumb the depths as it were. Red seems to beckon us like a siren of the rainbow, with its sweet, sultry song. So let us accept that singular invitation as an excuse to stare deep and longingly into that whole sumptuous spectrum. Let it seduce us, and perhaps flirt a little ourselves. Let It passionately and boldly course through our veins (as if we had much choice.) Let it bleed into our psyche.

This salty color is caught up in life and death.

It gushes, it spurts, and it imbues. It vibrates, it glows and It captivates. Let us plunge into the whole spectrum of possibilities. Cinema, at it’s heart, is moving imagery infused with life.

We infuse it with that life, and we can also draw from it. The best artists can infuse it in many ways. We are sat down to observe this pulsing life, and so we shan't take it lightly. Look and listen well. Myself, I'm better at looking. So here it is. We will take it all in. We will obsess. We will squint. We will ponder and mull. We will lust. Review, re-watch and freeze-frame. Follow the motion, and follow the emotion. We will pull this dying light back from possible oblivion, and witness what it reveals. We will listen. Turn that best ear and lean in. So, that is to say, let’s watch some movies. Well, people never seem to stop making them, movies and television that is, and so it stands to reason that people never stop watching them, and so the cycle goes. And so it might be worth it to ramble and meander a bit more. Take a jaunt with Scorsese into a Van Gogh or Hieronymus Bosch, and look around. Examine those layered brush strokes and see what they tell us. Look into the picture as far as it will let us. Consider what’s in there and behind there. And again, take the time to stare deep and longingly.

Red extends the invitation, but every color attends the party.

Subject #1:

HANNIBAL, the NBC Series. It is only fitting that my first subject has red splattered all over it. “Hannibal,” is the remarkable series from NBC in its third season, not to be mistaken for the Ridley Scott film, or (god forbid) the far flung miscarriage of a prequel “Hannibal Rising.” I will be focusing on this returning series that, as Lawrence Fishburne has said,

is “breathing life back into the franchise.” I’m of course much less interested in the piece as part of a franchise, and more interested in its own merits. The show has very deftly sidestepped barriers and preconceptions, and has been able to cherry-pick characters and themes. Suffice it to say that the legal ownership of characters has been an issue, but this has clearly bolstered the creativity of the show instead of bogging down the situation, and things may be loosening up even more. An effect of that “life” breathing back into the franchise. I have not read any of the Thomas Harris novels, but I have a great affection and reverence for the first two movies, “Manhunter,” and especially “The Silence of the Lambs.” The show is officially based on characters and events from the novel, “Red Dragon.” and at this point has garnered some acclaim, but has middling ratings, so I am happy that the third season got on the air. The ad campaign for the third season has referred to the acclaim, but also to the show being the guiltiest pleasure on television. I had personally felt this was a bit insulting, but I now understand how clever the makers of the show are in embracing this description, and why it can be quite fitting. The show tantalizes us with the conventions of horror and suspense and does it with such precision and verve that it can make us feel guilty in an almost prurient manner, but not because the show itself is slumming it, or is lesser in quality somehow. It makes us feel truly guilty, just for watching such lurid events unfold in such an alluring and beautiful way. Following the imprint of “The Silence the Lambs,” the show maintains itself as meticulously crafted, stately and effective. The show also has a cult fan base now, the "Fannibals," as they are called, and they know how to show their affection.

There is a wealth of fan art that is quite frankly astounding. The creator and head writer Brian Fuller truly seems to love this aspect of the show’s cosmology, and embracing it fits right into how the show is promoted. It seems to act as a free viral marketing strategy. My overall observation here is that there is clearly a great deal of thought, effort and respect that has gone into the making of the show and the pure process of filmmaking itself, which has resulted is a distinct look and mood that sets it apart from most network television, and puts it in the running beside other top tier cable shows. So what is the show about? Narratively, at least on the outset, the show is a procedural about investigating a series of gruesome and elaborate murders (not unlike True Detective's first season). This honestly might be its biggest flaw and its saving grace simultaneously. I imagine the procedural aspect of the show is what made it a viable prospect for NBC, making it a Trojan Horse of sorts. The problem with that narrative model of course, is that the writing can become oppressed by such a constrained and repetitive structure, but as I’ve alluded, that hasn’t happened. All of this, of course, is just an excuse to meet Jack Crawford, Will Graham, and the titular, Hannibal Lecter. Initially the show is set before the events of, “Red Dragon,” but it will slowly bleed into them.

And since the show, in all practical respects, is a prequel, much of the reason we are watching is the how. While there is some re-invention, primarily in the character of Will Graham (he is, as they say, on the spectrum), the show’s outstanding elements are its method and mood, and it delivers in no small sum. Add onto that the impressive and captivating performances from the three leads, and also several stand out turns from the supporting cast and you’ve got yourself a stew going. Functionally, the show seems to be a study in friendship, love, control, psychopathy and even deity, within its own salacious, fantastical world. It is a world bathed in lurid imagery… and in red. Minus episode four, “Oeuf,” which Brian Fuller decided not to air, I have watched all of the show, but for the purposes of this blog I’ve re-watched the pilot, “Apéritif,” on Amazon.com, and the last three episodes of season two, “Ko No Mono,” “Tome-wan,” and “Mizumono,” which were available on NBC.com. Having done this, it becomes apparent how remarkably coherent and lucid the form of the show is,

thematically, narratively and visually. The following breakdown contains many, many plot points. The very first sequence of the pilot, “Apéritif,” is visceral, personal and cinematic, if a bit of a gimmick. It harnesses the elements of picture and sound boldly and firmly. In brisk succession we are shown an establishing shot of a house where our first crime scene is, a pool of blood in a doorway, and a nasty blood splatter on a home security keypad. Next is a dead husband on a gurney, and the dead wife on the floor in another pool of blood. Now a cut and move in toward our protagonist Will Graham. Police bustle around him and he closes his eyes as he is vignetted by a subtle red haze. We hear the clicking of digital distortion from something being run in reverse (my TV makes this exact sound when you mess with the Tivo too much). A yellow vapor lamp swings back and forth like a pendulum in the darkness and now Will is stepping through the scene, isolated. As he goes further, distracting elements are wiped away by the pendulum, and we proceed further backwards in time . The pool of blood retracts and disappears around the edge of the doorway. Will turns his head in subtle reverse motion, and blood flies backwards off of the security keypad. Will continues reverse til he’s outside the house.

He now sees as the killer sees, and does as the killer does. He kicks in the front door and performs the act of killing the family. He describes each action in gruesome detail aloud, as he performs them. The father flies back through the air in slo-mo as Will shoots him in the neck, blood spewing. He shoots the wife as she tries to type on the keypad and we see the familiar splatter land upon it. Will traverses the remainder of the killer’s moves in the same manner, performing them as he diagnoses them. He finally comes out of the red haze when he has to interact with the police at the scene.

These are a series of lurid, but graceful images. So we are told right away that this television show is cinematically informed. The easy path is being avoided here, and elements of horror are being treated deferentially, and subtly. The visual device of the glowing pendulum is very bold, to the point that it’s almost hokey. The pendulum of course evokes the classic “Poe,” image from the annals of horror and combines it with that of a forensic tool used to closely scrutinize. It also looks a lot like a windshield wiper, seemingly to wipe away all superfluous information from Will’s mind as he proceeds. It is a very imaginative device, and a multibarbed hook for the audience. There also seems to be a general abstract celebration in the aesthetic beauty of the red spray, but it’s still not a giddy one as it might be in a Tarantino film. It’s more composed here. The sequence ends with a flawless, if a bit clever, rack-focus transition from Will staring at the face of the dead wife to Will finishing his presentation of the case in a class room, suggesting how Will can’t help but live these images on a visceral level. Class comes to an end and we meet Jack Crawford, played by a grounded and streetwise Lawrence Fishburne, having been lured back to TV by the role despite the mire of CSI. We learn of Will’s mental capacities, especially his gift for empathy, which Will describes as an active imagination.

It is at this point Jack so evocatively asks, “Can I borrow your imagination?” This is the brilliant license that the show lends itself. This allows for flights of fancy, and provocative, playful imagery to be explored within such a sinister and debauched cosmology. We are permitted to peer through the privileged window that is the mind and eyes of this Will Graham. Will, inevitably of course, is brought by Jack to investigate a crime. We are now presented with another of the show’s beautiful cinematic elements. An unsettling hum paired with an ominous, meticulously filmed time-lapse of a location is the show’s preferred technique for establishing and transitional elements. It is this family’s house in Minnesota where our heros eventually find the dead body of a teenage girl lying in her bedroom. Will is now left alone with the body and his imagination.

A dull blue sheen and a soft spotlight cast onto the girl's body create the tablaeu of a moonlit stage upon which someone has left her only to be discovered. The glowing pendulum returns as Will begins his work.

Will imagines himself attacking the girl, only to be pulled back to reality mid-strangle, and thrust into a discussion with the forensics team.

The girl’s wounds seem to have been caused by antlers. The show takes a deep breath here as Will is driving home in Wolf Trap, Virginia. He gets to take his time when he discovers a stray dog, “Winston.”

He pateintly brings him home, where he introduces him to his already large collection of canines. Another time-lapse shot, this one of Will’s house, followed by Will and his many dogs lying down drift us into a dream where Will lies next to the dead teenage girl. He reaches out to her, but she floats away, revealing her bleeding abdomen. Next, Will looks down at us, his face submerged in a sink. It clouds with blood and he lifts himself out...

Into what is clearly the bathroom from Stanley Kubrick’s, The Shining, that is apparently at the FBI building.

Here we witness Will accepting the challenge to walk down that vivid, sinister path of bad decisions.

This show has an almost grandiose sense of historical cinematic vocabulary and it wants us to us look back into the history of horror and suspense, just as that very scene in The Shining looks into the past. Dr. Alana Bloom’s introduction is at the FBI academy. In a bright red skirt and print blouse she walks among a sea of cadets and Jack as well in navy blue. We don’t even need to hear her speak to know she is clearly going to be pulled down a similar path as her colleague Will. I’ve never been in a forensics lab, but I’m sure they look nothing like the one on this show. That being said, it’s kind of the opposite of what we’ve seen on the afore-alluded CSI.

It has a huge vaulted ceiling, almost like the inside of a pyramid with a sky light.

It is very bright, unlike the laser tag room of CSI. It has the look and function of a proscenium and a mausoleum combined. The crew explores inside of the murdered girl as Will stares into and through the dark opening in her abdomen. The girl appears to Will from the darkness, still floating from his dream. She is then silently impaled by antlers. As the crew notes that the liver was taken out and then put back inside of her, Will’s eyes are obscured by one of their arms. He doesn’t need or want to see her. It’s all very clear in his mind already. “There’s something wrong with the meet.” Will says. “She has liver cancer.” states a lab tech. Will nods and delivers the big line that we’ve all been waiting for, “He’s eating them.”

Speak of the devil. A lilting piano introduces us to a reflection of evocative reds on a black table. A pomegranate and strawberry, and a delectable looking meal of red meat is cut and loaded onto a fork. Finally, quietly, here is Hannibal Lecter eating delicately, alone in the dark. What little light falls on him accentuates the skull beneath his face.

The image is teasing and foreboding. The next image we see is a pleading hand reaching out, haloed in red. It turns out to be a patient asking for a tissue relieved by a red wall in Hannibal’s enormous office. This is a very cheeky image… and yet elegantly rendered and very effective, for no one is safe as Hannibal’s charge after all. As Jack finally gets in to talk to the good doctor he delivers his lines in stabs, playfully and loudly, but not quite rudely, amongst Hannibal’s lavishly decorated office. Hannibal himself is very quiet, and in this scene his office is lit with bright white light from above, betraying any lurking danger.

The two look at a set of Hannibal’s drawings, and a close-up of his hands cutting pencils with a scalpel tells us how lovingly hand crafted meticulous and sinister the show promises to be. “The detail is incredible.” as Jack says himself. At long last our two forces of nature meet, but not as a storm might meet a coast. Hannibal and Will’s initial meeting is as stand-offish and passive aggressive as it gets. They are separated by every cinematic device in the book. They avoid each other through focus, editing, angles, body positioning, pace, scenario, eye-lines and dialogue. The only thing that Jack has done effectively is to put them in the same room. These two speak in images to each other constantly in their dancing conversation. Hannibal: “There are no effective barriers for intrusive thoughts.” Will: “I build forts. Eyes are distracting. Sometimes you see too much, sometimes you don’t see enough.” Will clearly sees too much all the time, and doesn’t really like it. Hannibal: “Observing is what we do. No forts in the bone arena of your skull for things you love.” Hannibal is doing his best to look penetratingly into Will’s skull. These two men desperately want to see each other, but each has put up an enormous blockade. Will ends the sparring match with, “You wouldn’t like me when I’m psychoanalyzed.” “Excuse me, I have a class to teach on how to psychoanalyze.” and exits the scene. Hannibal finishes his side by talking to Jack, and really to us. “Perception is a tool pointed on both ends.” “This cannibal you have him after, I think I can help good Will see his face.”

And thus a tumultuous relationship is catapulted. Directly after that exchange another girl is found in Minnesota, impaled on the antlers of a Stag. This crime scene is set in the bright daylight, with an almost turquoise sky and a warm amber field. This color scheme reference I find the most impressive because of its subtlety. It’s clearly borrowing from a scene in, "Zodiac," set in a park in California, where two people are held at gun point, then brutally attacked by a would be serial killer. This reinforces the kind of unnerving story we are telling and how we are telling it. One of the Forensic techs notes, “He took her lungs.” We now get to see Hannibal preparing food for the first time on the show, although it is not elaborate. It is of course a set of lungs that he is pounding and slicing.

Again, Hannibal enjoys his meal alone with a satisfied smirk on his face. Another time-lapse takes us to Will’s hotel room in Minnesota. As Will showers, the curtain parts behind him and reveals a Black Stag in the darkness. Surprise, surprise, first thing in the morning Hannibal is at Will’s hotel room door. He asks to come in two separate times as politely as he can, and Will silently let’s him in. He has prepared breakfast for them both. A protein scramble. They sit by the window and eat together, lit by a familiar site of parted curtains. Hannibal’s gaze lingers rather cheekily on Will as he eats the sausage, and our imaginations do the rest. Hannibal does his best to re-ingratiate himself to Will, but the barbing back and forth continues. They speak of the crime scene they are there to investigate. “The devil is in the details.” says Hannibal. Will responds, knowing that the crime scene was a masquerade. “He had to show me the negative so I could see the positive” Hannibal let’s Will know that he thinks Jack sees him as, “a fragile little teacup.” Will chortles at this and asks, “How do you see me?” Pointedly Hannibal says, “The mongoose that went under the house, when the snake slithered by.” The two men's gazes penetrate deeply but they have both put up substantial barriers to protect themselves, despite wanting so desperately to see each other. Since they can't manage to get a good look at each other, they visit a portable construction office, and go, “peeking behind the curtain,” as Hannibal puts it. This is where they find out who is the killer of the teenage girl from the first murder, Garrett Jacob Hobbs. Before they leave, Hannibal manages to call Garrett and warn, “They know.” The pendulum now presents us with Will covered in the familiar blood spray the show exults. We move backwards in time to Will sitting in a car with the same blood on his face. The camera tracks across the windshield frame to the driver side window, having gone back in time to our present tense, effectively wiping the blood off Will’s face with the frame.

This is quite a trick to explain but it really looks very stylish, and suggests the sort of dissociative state that Will is experiencing. They are at the house of Garrett Jacob Hobbs. It’s a nice, tranquil, sunny day. Garrett throws his wife out the front door, throat slit and bleeding out on the front porch.

Will goes inside and manages to shoot Garrett before he can finish slitting his daughter’s throat.

The arterial spray covers Will's face. He manages to stop her from bleeding to death, and Hannibal calmly steps in to relieve Will covering her throat. As Garrett dies on the floor, he turns to Will and says, ”You see, you see.”

A wise suggestion to Will and the audience to keep our eyes open.

In the last scene of the episode, Will walks down a hospital hallway in slow-mo until Hannibal is revealed. He sits next to the daughter, Abigail Hobbs, sleeping in a chair by her bedside, hand on hers, blood on his sleeve, having beat Will to the punch. A terrifying and portentous image with which to leave an audience, and not a word needs to be said. So this is a show about bearing witness, and it connects the dots rather effectively across all the episodes to the season two finale. The body of the last two seasons of the show is filled with consistent visual marvels, but there is only so much time to write about this.

Here is a look at how themes and images connect across the finale. In the opening of episode 11, “Ko No Mono,” we see the main stay that is the Black Stag painfully birth Will, as a Demon Stag himself, horns atop his head. This is under the watch of the Hannibal Demon Stag.

These are famailiar images that have transformed throughout the show. At this point in the show Will has convinced Hannibal and several other people that he is a killer, having been jailed for that very suspicion. The two are now strange friends. They sit down to a delicacy that is a small bird, eaten in a single mouth-full. After having completed the debaucherous act, Hannibal states, “I don’t hide from god.” Interesting words for a man who often thinks himself to be god. Will talks about the act of killing the reporter, Freddy Lounds, and how it made him feel. Directly after the conversation we are presented now, with the third cinematic incantation of what was an inspired image from the mind of Thomas Harris. The flaming body of Freddy Lounds materializes, strapped to a wheel chair and sent careening through a parking garage. A thunderous image, but really I was just glad they got it over with. Next we discover that Will has impregnated his current lover, Margot Verger, the sister of Mason Verger who is the heir to a livestock fortune. This pregnancy would effect who inherits the fortune. I really don’t care for Michael Pitt’s performance as Mason Verger, so I will be leaving out any real discussion of the character or his plot line. Later, Will and Hannibal sit at a desk in Hannibal’s office talking about fatherhood, and Abigail Hobbs. She is the daughter of the killer from the pilot, Garrett Jacob Hobbs, and is now presumed dead. Hannibal asks Will, “What kind of father would you be?” “I would be a good father.” “So quickly we become attached to the idea of something that does not exist.” “I’m not attached, I’m just anticipating attachment.” Hannibal relates to what Will is saying. “Abigail reminded me of my sister. I was like a father to her. She was not my child but she was my charge.” Will asks, “Why did you kill Abigail?” “What happened to abigail had to happen no other way.” Will starts to break apart. “I still dream about Abigail, teaching her how to fish.” “I’m sorry I took that from you, I wish I could give it back.” Will cries openly in front of Hannibal, and for once we sense that Hannibal really sees his pain. These men have come so close to really seeing each other, and yet are still so far apart. Hannibal is desperate to find a way for them to be together. Hannibal comes out with, “Occasionally I drop a teacup to shatter on the floor on purpose. I’m not satisfied when it doesn’t gather itself up again. Some day perhaps the cup will come together.” Will looks at Hannibal. We see a teacup gracefully reverse itself shattering. This gorgeous little image does two things. It remembers a moment in the pilot when Hannibal referred to Will as a fragile teacup, and of equal importance it refers to the device used by Stephen Hawking and Errol Morris to elucidate the ideas in A Brief History of Time. The body Freddy Lounds is now found rearranged into the shape of the many armed god of death, Shiva. Afterwards, Will and Hannibal converse in his office. Hannibal says, “Every act of creation is also an act of destruction. Will responds, “How many lives have to be sacrificed? How many consciences devastated?” “As many as were necessary.” “You sacrificed Abigail.” Will now literally sees himself where Hannibal sits, and says,

“You cared about her as much as I did,” ultimately accusing himself of letting Abigail die. “Maybe more.” Hannibal sees now, himself where Will sits, feeling as close to Will as he ever has. Hannibal says, “But then how much has god sacrificed?” Hannibal persists in wanting to be god. “I prayed I would see Abigail again.” says Will. “Your prayers did not go entirely unanswered. Will, should the universe contract, should time reverse and teacups come together, a place could be made for Abigail in your world.” “What place would that be?” “You’ve lost a child Will. It seems your likely to gain one. God is beyond measure in wanton malice, and matchless in his irony.” Hannibal so very much wants to be god, but also so very much wants to be with Will. Hannibal sees that Abigail is Will’s lost child. We also know that Will is still an expectant father of Margot Verger's baby. Behind Hannibal to his left, the shadow of the stag sculpture moves. Will and Hannibal both look to see Shiva the god of death with its many arms, and the horns of the stag. Hannibal so very clearly wants to create a life with Will at this point. But, as Margot Verger tries to escape her homicidal family, driving away, she is hit by a car. She wakes up in an operating room right out of Dead Ringers, complete with red operating gowns and curtains. Her brother Mason tells her, her lady parts will be now have to be removed, thus terminating any pregnancy.

Hannibal wants Will all to himself. Alana Bloom, who has since become Hannibal’s lover (and needs beeter characterization), confronts Jack, forcing the inevitable reveal that Freddy Lounds is indeed still alive. So we now know for sure that Hannibal has been up to his kinky god-like business of arranging dead bodies into statues. Will then discovers Margot in recovery, no longer pregnant, closely followed by the all seeing, all controlling Hannibal. Hannibal has successfully manipulated Will into wanting to kill Mason Verger. When Will he does go to kill him, we learn that it's only a ruse to get Mason to attack Hannibal.

Will is still seemingly our hero. Almost all of episode 12, “Tome-wan,” is setup for the entrapment of Hannibal in episode 13. In Hannibal’s office, Will pushes his "friend" to kill Mason Verger, both in vengence and so that the FBI can catch him in the act. Will asks, “Would you join me at the table. Verger is a pig and deserves to be someone’s bacon.” Everything is imagery with these two. Hannibal asks Will to Imagine what he wants to happen. And does he ever. Will closes his eyes and we see him lovingly and pleasurably slit Hannibal’s throat in lurid slow motion before he is lowered to feed Verger’s pigs. “What did you see?” asks Hannibal. They both smile. Next, when this scenario actually does present itself, Will is unable to murder Hannibal or even to let Mason do the deed. Will still seems to want to catch Hannibal in the act, although he’s increasingly torn. He tells Hannibal, “Let Jack see you with clear eyes.” Hannibal agrees, “Jack has become my friend. I suppose I owe him the truth.” So much of this show is about the act of looking and observing. Episode 13, “Muzimono,” is a playbook of raucous storytelling. In Hannibal’s office it is literally the darkest it has ever been. Things begin with a relentless ticking, and Hannibal’s absolutely gorgeous, perfect penmanship writing a dinner invitation to Jack. A phenomenal feat of editing sets Will in a simultaneous but seperate conversation with both Jack and Hannibal, his loyalties torn between the two. The sequence ends with a set of split screens constructed astoundingly well. The penultimate has Jack and Hannibal delivering the same line, “Will you do what needs to be done?” Will’s split face then painfully aligns with incredible precision as he responds affirmatively. Next Will is on top of a cabin in a forest of antlers holding a rifle, next to Garrett Jacob Hobbs. Garrett says his famous last words, “You see, you see.” He points to the Black Stag and Will shoots it down.

Will is now resigned to his duty. He must stop Hannibal. A flurry of falling pages welcomes us into Hannibal’s office. Will and Hannibal are burning his records. Hannibal describes his exit strategy using an image to which Will can relate.

“I will wade into the quiet of the stream." As Will tosses pages into the fire, behind him Hannibal lovingly sniffs his hair and sees a forest of red.

It is a voluminous head of red hair belonging to our favorite tabloid reporter Freddy Lounds.

It seems the game is afoot. Will sits down to dinner with Hannibal, the darkest the dining room could possibly be, with a carcass and many reds on the table.

Who's body does this represent? Hannibal himself wears a red plaid suit. This is perhaps as dandy as Hannibal's ever looked as well. They discuss the imagery of the insect life cycle, like that of the moth in “The Silence of the Lambs.” It acts very much like that of a dead loved one in our mind," Dormant for so long but very alive.

Hannibal is later revealed to be stunningly accurate with this inference. Hannibal continually does his best to devilishly lure Will to elope together. They almost flirt, bandying metaphor and imagery back and forth. At the FBI Kade Prurnell, the bureau’s attorney shows up in a piercing red dress and drops the Hammer on Jack’s plan to entrap Hannibal. Jack is escorted out. The driving ticking kicks back in. As Will has gotten wind of Jack’s suspension, he calls to tell Hannibal. “They know,” elucidates Will, echoing the same scenario from the pilot. The ticking again. Jack finally shows up in Hannibal’s kitchen, as promised from the tease at the beginning of the season. Hannibal is cooking the dinner he hoped to share with Jack. He puts down his knife and we see Jack’s clear reflection on the blade. Hannibal, in an act of strange solidarity, offers him a knife to help prepare the meal. Hannibal looks at himself reflected in this knife. What does he hope to see? Jack delivers the terrifying and sad line, ”This is the clearest moment of our friendship.” And now we witness a raw, brutal, fight of retribution survival between these two beasts of men. In the hurricane of violence, Jack ends up with a shard of glass lodged in his neck, and retreats to the pantry. Hannibal has become the monster we’ve been waiting for, slamming himself against the pantry door. Alana Bloom, now disillusioned, shows up outside in the rain, the music now sounding like a poison love song a la “Twin Peaks.” She enters the kitchen and confronts Hannibal with a gun. Hannibal calmly and sadly tells her that if she leaves then he won’t kill her. “Nothing seen nor said.” says Hannibal. ”I was so blind.” laments Alana. ”Stay blind. Walk away. Be blind, don’t be brave.” Bloom pulls the trigger, but it dry fires. Hannibal says flatly, ”I took your bullets.” As Bloom flees upstairs, Abigail Hobbs is revealed to be alive. She approaches Bloom, and whimpers, “Im so sorry.” She shoves Alana out the window in a flurry of glittering glass and raindrops. A field of raindrops slowly falls, and Will finds Bloom on the ground. The raindrops become blood, falling through floor boards. It’s Jack’s blood seeping through the pantry. It pools under the door. Will finds Abigail in the kitchen, and she tries to tell him everything. “Where is he?” asks Will. Her eyes subtly flick right and left behind Will. ”You were supposed to leave.” Will stammers. ”We couldn’t leave without you.” Hannibal softly caresses Will’s face. He then stabs him, guts him, and embraces him, bringing him in close. “Time did reverse and the teacup came together. I wanted to surprise you and you wanted to surprise me. Now that you know me, see me. I gave you a real gift, you didn’t want it.” Will responds, “Didn’t I?” ”Fate and circumstance has returned us to this point. We have returned to when the teacup shatters.” Hannibal slices Abigail’s throat completely, destroying what he mended in the pilot episode. With his entire world bleeding, Hannibal leaves them both on the floor and steps out the front door. He pauses to reflect, and “wash” himself in the rain. Hannibal walks out into the night. Will turns to see the Black Stag die on the floor next to him, having destroyed his bizarre friendship with Hannibal, the stag having ultimately served as an amorphous symbol for many things. A quick fade down, then up to a beautiful sky with some lilting piano, and the credits running… And then a plane flies though the shot. Hannibal is in first class on his way to Paris. Hannibal closes his eyes, and perhaps sees Will fishing in the quiet of the stream. What a tumultuous show steeped in imagery and so much about bearing witness. The future of the show will no doubt be surprising, stylish, inventive, whimsical, and salacious as we have become accustomed. Will Tordella.